


Imagine Me & You

by obsessivewriter



Series: Imaginary [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Happy Ending, Imaginary Friends, Lonely kids, Mental Illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21828259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivewriter/pseuds/obsessivewriter
Summary: A Gift for BerryBagelWith her prompt:“Arya and Gendry have never met, but sometimes they can hear each other’s thoughts”.When you are a kid and you hear a voice in your head you call it your friend, though everyone else calls it imaginary. When you grow up and your imaginary friend never goes away you call it a mental illness.
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Series: Imaginary [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865491
Comments: 80
Kudos: 313
Collections: Gendrya Gift Exchange 2019





	Imagine Me & You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BerryBagel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BerryBagel/gifts).



> I was asked to take over this prompt and at first, I was worried, since I knew other great writers have tackled similar prompts, so, this is my take on it, hope you like it BerryBagel!

[ ](https://imgur.com/EeHTqA1)

**_"Now I find it hard to remember_ **

**_All the times I tried to forget her"_ **

Wallows, "Pictures of girls"

**_Childhood_ **

Gendry didn't know when it had started, she was just always there, in his mind, calling him stupid. He started calling the voice squirt because it sounded small and annoying, it wasn't until years went by, and the pitch of her voice suggested to him she was indeed a girl. No one really explained to him what an imaginary friend was supposed to be, but some adults in his life had finally called it that when they got fed up with what they considered Gendry's antics. When he understood what they meant about him having an imaginary friend, he accepted it, just like he had accepted his lot in life, which meant that he didn't accept it at all, but life sucks, and you have no other option.

An imaginary friend was supposed to be the result of a very active imagination. Gendry had never considered himself to be particularly imaginative, but somehow he had come up with Squirt as his imaginary friend.

Arya, on the other hand, loved daydreaming. She loved climbing trees, pranking her older brothers, and finding the best hiding places to observe those who worked for her family. The world in which she was born was vast and full of people. She certainly had no need to invent playmates when she was surrounded by four siblings, a cousin and the son of family friends, that her parents had taken in. The world she knew was crowded, and somehow her mind was as well. How she ended up with such an unimaginative imaginary friend was a mystery. His voice had been inside her head since she was old enough to know that the face that stared back in the mirror was her own. Stupid had just always been there, grunting and calling her on all her bad ideas.

Having an imaginary friend eased the loneliness a bit, the type you get when you are not yet six and already an orphan, and your mother's friends passed the buck until you end up in the system because no one could honor the promise to care for her child.

An imaginary friend was someone you could talk to when your family was so big that sometimes they forgot about you, and you would become no one and blend in with the heirloom furniture of your family's home.

In their experience, though, an imaginary friend was opinionated and always there, but they would listen.

Whenever Gendry shut himself from the world, Squirt would challenge him and ask him what he was afraid of, and Gendry would reply that he wasn't scared of anything. Squirt would then counter saying that, of course, he wasn't afraid of anything, except sitting with someone for lunch at school or returning the greetings from the librarian. The truth was that despite people thinking of Gendry as a loner, without her, he would have been ten times worse.

Arya's older brothers loved to make fun of her whenever they listened to her arguments with Stupid, while her sister Sansa would roll her eyes. Their mother would tell them to leave her alone, and say that all of them had had imaginary friends of their own and they had eventually grown out of them. Her father would take her seriously and ask questions like what was Stupid's favorite color (black) and pet peeves (people, in general). Her younger brothers would ask her if Stupid knew their own imaginary friends: _Professor Wormhole_ (Bran's) and _Monkey Legs_ (Rickon's), which Arya thought was idiotic. However, she still asked about them, and Stupid had answered, _'Why would I?'_ With a grunt. The last drop had been Nanny Mordane, setting up a place on the table one supper time, which made Arya yell at her, saying that imaginary was not the same thing as invisible.

But then, you can only believe in imaginary friends for so long. Sooner or later, childhood wonder is doomed to die.

**_Adolescence_ **

Gendry had made peace with the fact that he was half-mad for hearing some voice in his head, and he chucked it to having lost his mother when he was so young and having to move from home to home.

Little kids with imaginary friends, who grow up in houses with mothers and fathers, and a dog in a fenced yard, are found cute by family and friends.

Little orphan boys with imaginary friends are not found cute by anyone; they are found peculiar on reports drafted by well-intentioned and fed-up social workers alike.

Lonely teenage boys in the foster system, who are found arguing with themselves, get red stamps on their files and mandatory counseling.

After a while, he learned what the right thing to say was that Squirt was just make-belief, that he knew he really didn't have a voice in his head. That whatever he had said in the past was just calling for attention.

That he couldn't hear anything in his head beside his own thoughts.

___

Arya realized one day that having a crowded home was not a good enough reason for having a crowded mind. Her mother's friends would stare, and her mother would have that apologetic look on her face, and then share concerned looks with her dad. At school, it was even worse. She had grown up and learned not to let words hurt her, words with sharp edges like daggers that told a story about her looks and her weird ways, and then, words that also talked about how there was something wrong with her mind. 

When Arya heard about dissociative identity disorder for the first time, she thought that perhaps Stupid was an alter of hers, though it was weird that they shared her consciousness instead of taking turns. Whatever the case, it was easy to accept things if you have never known anything different.

* * *

Despite the mental illness that Gendry was sure he possessed and that he feared was a ticking bomb that one day would go off, he went through the same milestones as anyone else. His voice changed with embarrassing squeaks until it became deep. He grew tall, his shoulders broaden, and the fuzz on his face turned into the shade of a beard. And finally, one day, when he stared at his reflection on the mirror, there was no longer a boy looking back, but a man.

And he had the same wants as every other young man.

One night, when he was sixteen, he had come into his room, looking forward to the luxury that a bit of privacy was in his life. He had barely conjured the image of the woman in his mind's eye, nothing extraordinary, predictable, really, for the purpose, an amalgamation of a billboard advert of some lingerie brand, and bits and pieces of women that had got his attention on the tube. A run of the mill fantasy just getting started, a girl in a trench coat coming into his room. When the cherry-red lips had parted to speak to him, it had been Squirt's voice coming out.

"Really? Her? A bit predictable, don't you think?"

"Leave me alone!" He said, placing a pillow over his eyes and grunting into it.

"What are you going to do?" She asked in a whisper.

"None of your bloody business!"

Of course, his mental illness was going to sabotage his plans. An illness embodied into the voice of a tiny girl that would shame him for wanting to touch himself.

"Like I don't know what the lotion and the tissues are for."

There was no way she could have known about those without him thinking about them. She couldn't see what he saw, only any mental images he made for himself.

"Have you ever heard about privacy?"

"Why would you get any privacy?" Exasperation evident in her voice, "I never do."

"Not my fault you have so many siblings."

"I meant you."

Gendry thought it rich that Squirt had found the way to turn the tables on him. It was silly, the figment of his imagination had a lavish made-up life, and he found himself arguing with her about the nuisance that he was in her own fictitious life.

"I bet you would love to get privacy to think about that stupid purple-eyed blond boy."

His mention of the boy surprised not only Arya but Stupid as well. Why would the mental image of that particular classmate be any different than anybody else?

"Ned? Gross, no. And I don't do that."

Arya wondered what her psyche was trying to tell her through this stupid made-up scenario. She thought the whole thing was some fucked up shit, a way to deal with the lack of privacy in her life and the new sensations that had started pooling deep inside of her. All of that conjured into the fantasy of her other life that was Stupid.

"Sure, you never touch yourself under the sheets, or in the shower."

It was a low blow, but Gendry knew that whenever he felt he reached his limit, he had a tendency to have his words cut. It was a nasty habit that he suspected he had gotten from his father, whoever the bastard had been.

"Shut up. I don't do it like you do."

"Whatever, suit yourself."

"Fine!"

They both remained silent for a few minutes.

"Maybe we should come up with a code word."

"For wanking?"

"No! For when one needs time alone, for whatever reason, no questions asked. A word that wouldn't normally come up."

"Like _acorn_?"

"That's a pretty stupid word."

"What? Are you fond of acorns? Do you see yourself often about acorns _squirrel girl_?"

" _Acorn_ it is."

* * *

Gendry could think of countless times when he wanted Squirt to be gone, to forget she had ever existed in his head. Times when he would listen to death metal at such volumes that he was sure he'd come to regret it in his senior years when he was a grumpy old man, and hard of hearing to boot, but he thought it was worth it it it make her leave him alone. Arya had come to loathe the long periods when Stupid would just grunt in disagreement with her thoughts and knew that picturing her period was a sure way to get him to shut himself off from her mind. 

But for all that they tried to ignore each other, there was one word from their imaginary friend that they would heed to no questions asked: _'Run.'_

It had happened first with Gendry when he had arrived at his current foster home after school, and all the lights were out, except for the faint hue from the television. He had found his foster dad looking at the tv with vacant eyes until he had turned his head and stared at him. Suddenly those eyes were no longer empty but full to the brim with something that Squirt could not see, but in her mind felt red hot and molten, and it stunk of alcohol.

 _'Run!'_ She thought with all her might, and Gendry didn't question her.

It happened to Arya a couple of years later, when she had come out of the tube one night. It was winter, and the sun had gone before five o'clock, and the wet cobblestones under her boots made rhythmic noises. She had been far too immersed thoughts about coming exams that she had not dwelled on the counter rhythm of another set of steps, that her subconscious had continued to play in the back of her mind. He may have been stupid, but he knew what danger felt like.

 _'Run!'_ He had yelled at her with all his might, and she had listened.

* * *

Then there had been those times that they would never admit to a soul. Conversations born out of true desperate and dark moments, often in the middle of the night. Confessions they would never say out loud.

_'My family would be better if I didn't exist. I don't fit with them.'_

_'I ruined my mother's life. I was an accident, and she had to put her life on hold to take care of me, and then… then she died.'_

_"I feel like I am no one. Everyone sees someone different in me, so many different masks they want to see, but none of them is me, and sometimes I feel like I don't know who I truly I am.'_

_'My first foster dad was nice. I liked him. I thought he wanted me to stick around, and then he gave me back.'_

_'I think I disappoint my mother. My whole family, really.'_

_'I wish I could belong to someone. Some place. I wish I knew what it felt to have a home.'_

There were no platitudes as a reply. Just truths that that brought a little comfort, but hard facts nonetheless.

_'Most people suck.'_

_'Life's shitty.'_

_'Of all the people I have met in my life, you're the one I hate the least."_

_'Fuck him.'_

_'Fuck her, and all the rest. You do not disappoint me.'_

_'You have me. I can be your family.'_

* * *

**_Adulthood_ **

Long gone were the days of saying _'acorn'_ until they were blue in the face. Of playing loud heavy metal or thoughts of the joys of womanhood.

Maybe her mother was right. Perhaps you eventually let go of your imaginary friends. Oddest things happened than growing out of a mental illness.

Right?

He wasn't completely gone. Just faint. Drown under the burden of reality, of the world of lectures and study halls. Sitting at a table in the library, surrounded by towers of books, his voice was barely a distant whisper from the past.

It was a weird feeling, that vertigo you feel when you are falling asleep, and for a moment, you are no longer falling asleep and instead just falling. That moment when you seem to wake up, and you take stock of things you have lost, even when you tried so hard to get rid of them, like when you finally don't have the hiccups anymore.

And for the briefest of instants, you miss them.

* * *

Her voice was mostly gone. Two years into Gendry's university life, hard-earned with sweat and blood, and the goodwill of strangers. The girl who would not shut up was almost completely silent.

At first, it had been joyful to feel himself alone in his mind. Like the first time you get to sleep in a large bed all on your own, and you splayed yourself in all directions, making sure no one could ever take the space you spent your whole life lacking.

But then the voice you tried so hard to forget was all but a sporadic echo, a ghost that haunts you in all the places where she's missing, and trying to remember what it sounded like was as frustrating to trying to recall a word that just won't come.

* * *

The first time Gendry noticed the girl he had slowly starting falling for was in the quad. A petite woman, but with an athletic build, stretching on a yoga mat. He was on his way to the library for a study session, but there had been something about her: the focus on her eyes, the disciplined movement, the perfect balance holding a posture on one foot, without moving an inch. Her body flowed elegantly from pose to pose, and he had justified his interest to himself because he wanted to see if he could recognize the poses from the single yoga class he had taken on a dare.

The petite brunette had gone from a low plank pose to a cobra, eyes closed as her head tilted back, and the early sunlight made her face look like it glowed. From there, she had gone to downward-facing dog, and then she had kicked her feet and brought them back in between her hands like her body was weightless. She walked her hands forward, and her feet raised to tiptoes, and she lifted her legs slowly to a handstand. Her left leg then went slightly ahead, and it flexed, resting her foot on her hip. Then she repeated the action with the other foot until her legs were crossed in an upside-down lotus pose, and she slowly brought them down until her knees rested on her elbows, and then she pushed back into a plank and then went to cobra once more.

"See something you like?" A voice beside him broke the spell, and he realized he had just stopped there, a few yards away from the girl, probably with his mouth hanging open.

He quickly turned to see a woman, a too-skinny blonde with an unflattering bob and a scowling face, decked in yoga attire and carrying a rolled mat on her back. She was clearly meeting the brunette, and she wasn't particularly happy to find Gendry ogling her.

"Ah, it's just impressive, I'm a big fan," he replied, stuttering.

The blonde raised one eyebrow skeptically.

"…of the yoga… routine… thingie…"

"It's Ashtanga Vinyasa Flow," she reproached.

"Of course, vinyasa. Big fan. And I was just about to-"

"Leave?" She suggested unapologetically.

After that time, he saw her often, leading a yoga class out in the grassy area of the quad, sometimes on her own and sometimes with the surly blond or walking around with books in the library, during his part-time shift at the lending desk. He wasn't blind, and like any other person, he had found himself drawn to others he found attractive. Since he had started uni he had dated a few women and taken the time to admire those who caught his attention on campus, but none had made him feel as enthralled as the petite yoga master had.

* * *

Arya first noticed him walking around the stacks in the library, pushing a cart full of books, taking them back to the place where they belonged. She'd probably try to explain that it was the look in his eyes, and the knitted brow, as he had been in the middle of a complicated equation. Arya would say that it had been the way he had gotten some rowdy group to hush with one look. Deep down, she'd had to accept that although those things were all correct, it had also been the way he looked. His broad shoulders, the defined muscles peeking out of the short sleeves of his t-shirt, and a rather well-formed behind.

That sort of thought used to be one she'd try with all her might to keep away from Stupid, but Stupid had been silent for months now.

She'd seen him at the gym, lifting weights, a small towel around his neck, and corded earphones hanging from his ears, ignoring the stares of giggling girls. Arya looked at him while she ran on a treadmill. She wasn't like those stupid girls, he just happened to be in her line of sight, and she felt herself smiling when he flatly ignored a one that seemed to have asked him to help her adjust a machine.

* * *

The first time Gendry was close enough to know that the petite brunette from his dreams had gray eyes, had been when she walked to his station at the lending desk. She had come holding a stack of books and trying to text something on her cellphone. She placed the books in front of him and then put the phone away. The moment she had looked up and had stared at him with her big doe eyes, Gendry had discovered that the most beautiful color in the world was gray.

It had been a surprise the first time she had found herself in front of the blacked haired sullen man that had caught her attention in the recent weeks. He had looked surprised when they had seen each other at such close proximity, his blue eyes almost electric. They had just stared at each other for a few seconds until Gendry had looked down, and started scanning the books in front of him. Arya concentrated on his hands, the protruding veins on them, and his large fingers, with blackened ends. Arya wondered what had caused the deep-set stains, and wondered if they resulted from car maintenance or a craft of some sort, one thing was clear to her, they were the product of hard work, that marred the fingers in silvery scars and hard-looking callouses.

And there was an ephemeral question: if the soot in them could leave a trail on her own snowy skin, the winding tale of her desires. The thought was interrupted by quick glances from his blue eyes as if looking for something in her. Arya suddenly felt caught, and she feared the ridiculous idea of him having heard her previous thought, making her cheeks heat with embarrassment and fury.

Gendry kept peeking at the girl in front of him despite his mind repeating, _'Stop looking at her, stop looking at her,'_ like a mantra. She suddenly caught him, and her cheeks had turned rosy and made her look even more beautiful than he thought her to be. The thought jumped quickly to her flushed face in the middle of her yoga routine, his restless mind then taking him to the flexibility of her limbs, and then it was a slippery slope into wondering if he could make her cheeks blush the same color with her legs wrapped around his torso.

"Take a picture it will last longer," said a voice he hadn't heard in so long, and it had been as if time had turned back.

Her voice as cooling as a bucket of icy water spilled over his heated thoughts.

"I was not staring, could you give me a fucking break?!" He found himself yelling back at Squirt.

Arya hadn't been able to stop herself from lashing out at the boy she had been ogling herself, embarrassed to feel caught. And then he had dropped the book he had been holding over the counter, and the deep voice spilling from his lips had been the same grumpy voice that she had loathed for so long, and yet she had craved to hear for months.

"Stupid?" She found herself asking.

"Squirt?" He asked himself.

"How are you real?!" They both ask at the same time, freezing where they stood, unsure of how to proceed.

"If you're done flirting," an annoyed-looking man in his forties standing behind Arya said, "do you mind scanning my books? I have an introductory class to teach in fifteen, and I am already annoyed because I hate bloody freshmen."

"We are not flirting!" Arya yelled, turning back and confronting the rude professor.

"You were from where I am standing, and cunt here was leering at you, so, if you two don't mind, I rather get my books scanned so I can fuck out of here before you two start making out."

"I was not leering!" Gendry shouted.

"Sure, you weren't."

"How are you even a university professor?" Arya challenged the man.

"Tenured, by the way," he replied, winking and enraging Arya even more.

"Just let me finish this, okay?" Gendry said to her, pushing her books to the side and taking the books from the man and starting to scan them, "I'm sorry, professor."

Once he was done, the man took off, mumbling to himself, and Gendry quickly scanned Arya's books and handed them back to her.

"Look, I'm done in 20 minutes if you would wait. I really think we should talk."

"Oh, you bet your arse we have to talk," she responded.

* * *

They walked to a small grassy area on the banks of the river that crossed the campus and sat on a low hill, overlooking the crew teams rowing in it.

"All these years, I always thought you were all in my head," she said, looking away.

It was madness, after all this time there she was, in the flesh. The idea was ludicrous, and either true or the bomb in his head had finally gone off.

"I thought you were my imaginary friend," Gendry confessed, feeling his lips pull into a broad smile and shaking his head.

"I did as well," she added, "until I was older."

"What did you convince yourself of then?" He asked, turning towards her, and meeting again those big gray eyes, still powerful enough to paralyze him.

"Dissociative identity disorder."

"Multiple personalities?" He asked.

"Yep."

"Clever," He replied with a smile.

"How about you?"

"Schizophrenia."

"Nice," of course, that was Squirt, only she could say that, lifting her chin with proud recognition.

"My father abandoned my mother before I was born," Gendry explained with a shrug, "so no clue what assorted clusterfuck of genes I get from him."

Arya thought for a moment, and then said, "well, it's been an honor being your mental illness."

"Likewise."

The stared at each other in silence, their hair blowing in the light breeze.

"So, what do we do now?" She finally asked, trying to brush her hair behind her ear.

"Does it still work? Are you still in my head?"

 _'Cluck like a chicken if you can hear me,_ ' she thought.

 _'Like that is going to work,'_ he thought back.

"It was worth to try," Arya said, shrugging.

"Where do we go from here."

"I don't know. Try to get to know each other? Our real names, maybe?"

"Gendry Waters," he introduced himself extending his hand.

She took it in hers and added, "Arya Stark."

"I can't believe I never asked you your name."

"I didn't think you had a real name, I mean, besides what I used to call you."

Gendry's face broke into a grin, and he found himself unable to stop from laughing.

"What?"

"You were literally the voice in my head calling me stupid."

"You should thank me. I helped forge your character."

"Charming," he responded with a frown.

"Hey, I have self-esteem issue product of you calling me Squirt all my life."

"Really?" He asked with an exaggerated gesture, "because of what I called you? Nothing to do with your height?"

"Stupid."

* * *

_'Arya.'_

That evening he found himself in his bed pondering on that impossible story of theirs.

Her imaginary friend.

Her name was Arya, the girl who could cross her feet into a lotus pose during a handstand.

The girl with the big doe eyes of stormy gray. The girl who-

 _'I'm just going to stop you right there,'_ she thought, interrupting him.

_'Shit... How much did you hear?'_

_'Enough,'_ Arya replied curtly.

_'This is embarrassing.'_

_'Come on, it's not that bad,'_ she tried to reassure him, _'so, you like me.'_

For some reason, that realization made her feel victorious. All her life, his deep voice had given her the feeling that he was big, a big stubborn bull. And now she knew, he was indeed big, tall and with broad shoulders. Strong. With firm arms, and a firm-

_'Is that my arse you're picturing?'_

_'Of course not!'_

She was out of practice guarding her thoughts. As much as Gendry was, it would seem.

 _'It is!'_ He replied smugly.

 _'Acorn!'_ Her thoughts yelled, _'I call acorn!'_

_'You need privacy to continue picturing my arse?'_

_'No! I want you out of my head!'_

The fluster in her inner voice amused him. It reminded him of their arguments and how it felt whenever he got one up her growing up. They were both so competitive and stubborn. What were the odds that the biggest pain in his arse would end up being the same girl who had enthralled him with those strong, shapely legs?

_'I heard that.'_

_'Fuck!'_

_'This is ridiculous,'_ she sighed, _'we can't live like this. Balor Hall, third floor, suite 9.'_

_'What's that?'_

_'My address, come here, we need to figure this out.'_

Gendry stared at the ceiling above his bed and concentrated on keeping his mind blank and avoid the thoughts to which he was sure his mind was itching to wonder.

 _'You think this is wise?'_ He finally asked.

_'Do you want to keep living like this?'_

_'On my way.'_

* * *

Baelor Hall stood on the corner of Oak St. and Smallwood Ave. A campus-adjacent building with spacious flats for the better-off students that attended Riverrun University. It wasn't surprising, really.

"Hey," she greeted him as she moved away from her door to let him in.

"Nice place," he said, looking around as Arya led him to a sofa in the front room, "all of this for you? I knew you were just another rich girl, Squirt."

"You thought I was a figment of your imagination," she reminded him, as she sat next to him with crossed legs.

"A _rich_ figment of my imagination. I'm a poor bastard, after all, it made sense."

Arya felt the air leave her body, and for a moment, she forgot to breathe again. She remembered Stupid's voice, the way it was before it had changed. The story she had learned from him, somehow harsher now that she knew he was flesh and blood, and not the exotic dream of a girl that did not know what it was to want in the same way he had.

"This is not just mine," she explained apologetically, and Gendry decided to pretend that he did not know the feelings he had sensed from her and the reasons behind them.

"I have a roommate, but she went away for the weekend."

"Great, we don't have to pretend we met when we were children," He added, trying to joke.

"We _did_ meet when we were children," Arya reminded him, tilting her head.

"You are really as frustrating in real life as you are in my mind, aren't you?"

"I also have very shapely legs in real life, according to you," she countered.

Gendry grunted, letting his head hung low.

"I guess we have to address that," he said, raising his head back and turning to face her.

"So you like me," she singsonged.

"And you like my backside."

"I don't just like your backside!"

"Really? Not _just_ my backside?"

"Argh!" She growled with her head in her hands.

He was enjoying this too much.

"This is stupid," she said with a sigh, as she raised her head, "absolutely mad."

He stood silent for a minute and finally spoke, "your voice was almost gone from my mind in the past couple of years. Maybe we could make the voices in our heads go away again."

"We should kiss," she blurted out.

"How is that going to help?"

"Well, right now, there is a certain attraction because we don't know what it will be like, but I'm sure that if you kiss me, it will be awful, and the mystery will be over."

"What? Like in a bizarro fairy tale? The prince will go back to being a frog?"

Irritation flowed in waves from him, they seemed to irradiate from his fingertips, just inches from Arya's, and she felt it and vibrating within her.

"Do you have a better idea?" She barked back.

"Fuck it," he said, and his hand cradled the back of her head and pulled her to him, joining her lips with his.

Arya had been the one to suggest the kiss, but if she was honest, she was sure he would have been more opposed to the idea, or that at least it would have taken effort to convince him. He startled her when his steady hand came to her nape, and he had guided her towards him, and yet, she had felt herself raising her face to him to meet his lips as if her body had known his intention. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if this connection of them went deeper than their conscious thoughts, as the contact with his lips had been electric, and any thoughts had disappeared from her mind.

It was impulsive, pulling her to him to take her mouth in his, instead of debating if the act would help or harm them. But the moment his lips started exploring hers, Gendry discovered the greatest irony: all his life he had tried to forget her, to make her voice and her thoughts disappear from his head, and as her lip was caught between his teeth, and his tongue gently tasted her, she was no longer in his head, but instead deep under his skin.

Her hands had gone to his chest, grasping his shirt for dear life, anchoring herself to him, feeling as she was being swept away by a storm. Sensing her need, his arms had moved to her lower back, to pull her tighter against him, until she was sitting on his lap. Their lips seemed to greet each other like old lovers, taking turns chasing and giving in. When the kiss ended, more because of the need for air than the desire to part, they stayed together with eyes closed, and foreheads resting together, feeling the warmth of each other's breaths on their lips.

"That was a big failure," he said with eyes closed, and something tugged inside Arya's chest.

Gendry suddenly felt her tense in his arms, and he opened his lids to find her big concerned eyes on him.

"I mean," he explained, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, "it did the exact opposite of getting you out of my mind."

"You don't want me gone anymore?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Far from it," he replied, giving her a quick and playful peck on the lips, "you?"

"Well, I couldn't hear your thoughts in my mind during the kiss, but I couldn't hear my own thoughts either."

"It is settled then."

"What's that?" she asked.

 _'When you're annoying, I'm just going to snog you senseless,'_ he whispered inside her head.

Gendry was sure she'd retaliate with bodily harm or at least with a witty comeback, but instead, she shut his mouth with the most searing kiss of his life.

Once she pulled away from him, leaving him dizzy, he silently asked, _'what was that?'_

_'You were being annoying.'_

**Author's Note:**

> How was it? Let me know!


End file.
